OUR NATION'S 
RESPONSI- 
B I L I T I £ S 

tSho-ughis J^or the tStmes 



•By 
FraLi\klin Butler Dwight 




FLEMING H. R.EVELL COMPANY 

J^eiat yorK Chicago Toronto 



OUR NATION'S 
RESPONSI- 
I L I T I E S 



Uhou^hfs _for the ^tmes 



"By 

Fretnklin Butler Dwight 




FLEMING H. R.EVELL COMPANY 

JVcfcw yorK Chicago Toronto 



\ 



92193 

Ltbrsiry of Conviruu* 

I WO Copies Received 
DEC 22 1900 

Copyright entry 

SECOND copy 

Oellvtred to 

ORDER DIVISION 

JAN 9 1901 






Copyright, 1900, by 
Fleming H. Revell CompoLtiy 



To 

THE MBMO'RV OF 

My FATHB'R 

whose high ideals of life and character were 
cherished by him as a priceless heritage 
from a Puritan ancestry, whose broad sym- 
pathies led him to delight continually in 
the onward progress of the world, and 
whose strong faith in God was the ground 
of his confidence in the great future of the 

American feople 



OUR NATION'S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

Psalm 147 : 20 — " He hath not dealt so with any nation." 
Luke 12 : 48— "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be 
much required." 

I. 

It is a very familiar subject which is sugges- 
ted by these words of the Psalmist: " He hath 
not dealt so with any nation." If this was true 
of ancient Israel, and the Scripture record abun- 
dantly confirms the statement, quite as true is 
it of our own nation. And as our own land is 
vastly larger, our population incomparably 
greater and our opportunities immeasurably 
superior to those of whom the text speaks, so 
much the more may we say, as we recall God's 
mercies to us in the past and as we think upon 
our present blessings and our future possibilities, 
truly " He hath not dealt so with any nation." 

I. It is well for every American citizen to 
think seriously of the hand of God in shaping 
the nation's history. How wonderful it seems 
that this great continent should have been kept 
in store through all the centuries waiting for the 
accomplishment of God's designs. All the really 
great leaders in the affairs of the Western world 
have delighted to recognize God's hand and to 
render praise to Him as the Sovereign Ruler of 
the Universe, by whose good providence all our- 

(5) 



6 OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

blessings have been attained. In the letter of 
Columbus to the King of Spain, recounting his 
first discoveries, he closes with these solemn 
words, "Truly great and wonderful is this, and 
not corresponding to our merits, but to the 
holy Christian religion. . . , What the 
human understanding could not attain that the 
divine will has granted to human efforts. For 
God is wont to listen to His servants who love 
His precepts, even in impossibilities, as has 
happened to us on the present occasion, who 
have attained that which hitherto mortal men 
had never reached. Therefore let the king and 
queen, the princes and their most fortunate 
kingdoms and all other countries of Christendom 
give thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, who has bestowed upon us so great a 
victory and gift." I like to go back to that old 
letter of Columbus. It was written by an ad- 
miral, not a bishop, but it is devoutly religious 
in tone, and it acknowledges the sovereignty of 
God and gives Him the praise for the discov- 
ery of our Western continent. 

The century which followed Columbus gave 
rise to little that is of special interest, except as 
it taught by sad examples that *'all is not gold 
that glitters," and that the lust of gold is not 
the quality which God uses in order to make a 
nation. It was the century of great voyages of 
discovery. It was the century of expeditions 
starting out with high hopes, expecting to find 



OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 7 

a boundless eldorado on the western side of the 
ocean, and too often returning discouraged and 
disappointed at their lack of success. But the 
century which followed this was the real time 
of rapid colonization, and it is not the lust of 
gold, but it is the desire for freedom in which 
to worship the God of their fathers, which 
brings to these shores the men and women 
who, under God, lay the foundations of the 
nation, and whose descendents still control its 
national affairs. Dark was the storm of relig- 
ious persecution which had settled down upon 
the British Islands in the early years of the 
seventeenth century. The great Reformation 
of the times of Luther and Calvin and Knox 
had left many things, both in doctrine and prac- 
tice, still unreformed. As the Rennaisance was 
a return to the real truth of things in art and 
literature, so the Reformation was a return to 
what was true and real and vital in the most 
important of all matters, the matter of religion. 
There was a party in England which would not 
be satisfied with the compromises which had 
been effected in that country between the spirit 
of truth and the bonds of error. Had the 
English Church continued to be wisely toler- 
ent, as in the days of Queen Elizabeth, we 
know not what might have been the result. 
But this was not to be. Persecution drove out 
the Pilgrim Fathers and God made even the 
"wrath of man to praise Him," in the great 



8 OUR nation's responsibilities. 

results which followed their coming to this 
"rock-bound coast." 

Truly, " the New World was called into exis- 
tence to redress the balance of the Old." Eng- 
land's loss was our gain. Europe was depleted 
of much of its best blood. But God was pre- 
paring a people which should in future genera- 
tions give back to Europe and to the world 
more blessings than they had taken away, — a 
people whose vast grain crops should one day 
feed the hungry multitudes in European cities, 
and whose missionaries should take the Bread 
of Life to the heathen nations in the remotest 
parts of the earth. " As years went by," says 
Richard Henry Green, the historian, "and the 
contest grew hotter at home, the number of 
emigrants rose fast. Three thousand new colo- 
nists arrived from England in a single year. 
Between the sailing of Wintrop's expedition 
(1630) and the assembling of the Long Parlia- 
ment (1640) in the space, that is, of ten or 
eleven years two hundred emigrant ships had 
crossed the Atlantic, and twenty thousand 
Englishmen had found a refuge in the West."* 
There was the real planting of the nation. 
There is the true beginning of American history, 
of which the letter of Columbus is but the 
foretaste and prophecy. From this time events 
move fast. Not alone to England do we owe 
the stock from which our people are sprung, 

• 5ee Green's_History of the English People; Vol. Ill, p. 165. 



OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 9 

The Dutch and the German Protestant, the 
French Huguenot, and later the Scotch, Irish 
and Welsh each contributed their quota of men, 
their various strong traits of national character, 
their individual virtues and their inherited 
accumulation of knowledge and experience to 
the common weal and the national life of the 
new country. Commerce flourished from the 
beginning, so far as it was permitted, and 
would have continued to flourish, but for the 
selfish legislation of Great Britain, which crippled 
American trades and brought on at last what 
Macaulay has termed "the inevitable separa- 
tion " from the Mother Country. Agriculture, 
especially in the Southern states, found ample 
opportunities to make its way in the virgin 
soil. Manufactures were, of course, not to be 
thought of for a long time, and the colonies 
looked to the Old World for all but the neces- 
sities of life. But the striking feature of all this 
early history is the care of our ancestors for two 
things, — Education and Religion. Harvard 
College, the fountain-head of American learn- 
ing, was founded in 1638. Yale began its noble 
career in 170T, and Princeton was started as a 
highschool in 1746, later to become a college, 
and then, in due time, a great University. 
Various other colleges were established from 
time to time, and great sacrifices were made to 
foster the cause of education and promote the 
interests of sound learning. 



lO OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

But in all these institutions the main thing 
was religion. Education was chiefly in order to 
religion. It was chiefly to raise up an educated 
ministry that colleges were founded. Our 
fathers believed that "wisdom," — "the wisdom 
which cometh from above," — "is the principal 
thing," and however sterile the soil, however 
poor the crops, however long and hard the New 
England winter there must always be something 
set aside for the Lord's work. They were men 
of strong convictions. They believed that some 
things were right and some things wrong, and 
there was no compromise. Because they feared 
the Lord, they hated evil. Churches, or as 
they always called them, "meeting-houses," 
must be built and maintained, and Christian 
schools and colleges must be planted through- 
out the land. The rising generations must 
come to their task better equipped than those 
which went before them; and industry and 
thrift were made the willing servants of noble 
aims and high ambitions. They believed that 
condition depends upon character, far more 
than character upon condition. They would 
make " the wilderness and solitary place rejoice 
and blossom as the rose," thus impressing them- 
selves upon their surroundings, rather than 
allowing their environment to impress itself 
unduly upon their own lives. Of course they 
were in some degree susceptible to outward 
conditions. Their solitary forest life, away 



OUR NATIONS RESPONSIBILITIES. II 

from the crowded haunts of men in old-world 
cities, had its peculiar influence upon their 
minds and hearts. That some of them became 
superstitious, and that they sometimes imag- 
ined themselves the special favorites of heaven 
and the sole possessors of the truth in matters 
of duty and doctrine is only what was to be 
expected of human nature under such condi- 
tions. But the great feature of their character 
was its recognition of the divine element in 
human life. They saw God in everything. 
They believed that, 

" Earth's crammed with heaven, 

And every common bush on fire with God ; 

But only He who sees takes off his shoes." 

This was their spirit through all the early years 
of their trials and triumphs. They saw God, 
and they stood before Him in reverence and 
godly fear. It was only as worldly prosperity 
increased, as the haste to be rich possessed 
the minds of many, and as, in later generations, 
luxury and extravagance began to take the 
place of simplicity and thrift, that the perils of 
a materialistic type of civilization began to 
appear. But the old standard of character 
still dominates many thousands of Christian 
homes, and the thought that lies behind that 
one word "duty" still rules the lives of the 
spiritual descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

Planted at a time in the world's history when 
there was need of more room for the expansion 



12 OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

of the best elements of European society, this 
nation has grown with a rapidity and strength 
which has been the wonder of history and the 
delight of its own children. It has absorbed 
men of every nation under heaven, and made 
them American citizens, not always of a high 
type, too often only to be a drag upon the state 
and a burden upon their fellows. But it has 
held out the boon of citizenship in a common- 
wealth where there is free opportunity for every 
man to make the most of himself, unhindered 
by the prejudices of class distinction, and with 
every encouragement to seek education and 
culture. One great and awful plague-spot threat- 
ened for many years the life of the nation. 
With the declaration that " all men are created 
free and equal " ever standing as our national 
profession of faith in freedom, an entire race of 
men, so far as they had been forced to come 
among us, were held in bondage. The under- 
lying principle of the national life was denied in 
practice, and the keenest minds in a large sec- 
tion of the country were employed in supply- 
ing arguments to bolster up an institution for 
which no real defence could possibly be made. 
But *' whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 
also reap " applies to nations as well as individ- 
uals. The most sanguinary war of modern 
times was the outcome of a state of things which 
could never continue to exist, while America 
boasted to the world that it was a free country. 



OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 13 

But God, in His good providence, saved the 
state from ruin. The fatal disease was arrested 
by a " blood-letting " which cost the land 
more than half a million lives, but which left us 
free to work out our appointed destiny unhin- 
dered by the dark shadow which had thus far 
lowered over the nation's life. With a wonderful 
vitality the people rose to new tasks. Prophecies 
of failure under the new conditions of free 
labor were unfulfilled. The great cotton crop 
of our Southern States increased with amazing 
rapidity. Manufactures, long successful in the 
North, made their way steadily southward and 
notwithstanding the great difificulties of the 
problems to be faced and the pitiable mistakes, 
— of which that part of our national history 
furnishes, alas, too many examples; — still the 
land was blessed with increasing prosperity, and 
the old work of receiving and assimilating a 
great foreign population went on apace. The 
nearly 4,000,000 of Revolutionary days had 
become more than 30,000,000 at the outbreak 
of the Civil War, and in the nearly forty years 
since that time we have grown to more than 
76,000,000. Surely the Pilgrim's vision is 
realized, 

" The babes have grown to sturdy men, 
The remnant waxed a throng." 

**He hath not dwelt so with any nation." 

2. So much for the history of the past. I 

shall not dwell in detail, upon the present 



14 OUR nation's responsibilities. 

resources of our land. But as we recall our 
national blessings, we can not but be reminded 
of how much has been given to us in the 
providence of God of material wealth, of 
rich treasure of the mine, of the forest and of 
the field, and also of the capacity which has been 
granted to us to use those things to promote 
civilization and to increase the welfare and hap- 
piness of mankind. Last year there was dug 
out of the earth, where God had stored it, 
$1,000,000,000 worth of mineral wealth. That 
means so much new riches added to the national 
possessions. The total receipts of the govern- 
ment from all sources amount to about $500,- 
000,000 in a single year, and the aggregate 
wealth of the country is reported in the last com- 
plete national census (1890) as having reached 
the sum of over $65,000,000,000, a sum so 
vast that we can form no adequate concep- 
tion of it.* The national wealth is now (1900) 
probably more than $76,000,000,000, and this 
statement appeals to us more directly when we 
see that, if divided up among all our population, 
every man, woman and child would receive 
about $1,000 each, which would be his or hers, 
quite irrespective of any new wealth, which 
they might create or acquire. These figures 
certainly show great national prosperity and 
incidentally suggest the great inequality be- 
tween man and man in a land where, could we 
« See Statesman's You: Book. 



OUR NATIONS RESPONSIBILITIES. 1 5 

have something like equal distribution of wealth, 
there need be no real poverty, no destitution, 
no unrelieved want. 

Dr. Josiah Strong gives some interesting 
facts bearing upon this subject. *' Our wealth 
in 1820 was less than $2,000,000,000. In 
twenty years it had increased eight fold. 
During the thirty years following, from i860 
to 1890, we created and accumulated 
$49,000,000,000, more than the entire wealth of 
Great Britain, and notwithstanding the great 
increase of population our wealth per caput, 
/>. , for each individual, doubled during this 
interval. From 1850 to 1890 the area of our 
farms was increased by 245,000,000 acres, an 
average of 16,000 acres every day." In 1830 
we had twenty-three miles of railway. Up to 
1895 we had built over 230,000 miles of rail- 
way, and during the last twenty years of this 
period we expended on new lines an average of 
one million dollars a day.* 

These are but a few of the figures which 
might be indefinitely extended. The pyramids 
of Egypt, the armies of Xerxes, the fabled 
wonders of the East fade into insignificance 
as we study the present resources of our 
own favored land. Well may we exclaim with 
the ancient prophet, "What hath God wrought?" 
Well may we remember that "every good 



* See "The Twentieth Century City," by Josiah Strong, D.D 
The Baker & Taylor Co., New York, p. 22. 



i6 OUR nation's responsibilities. 

and every perfect gift is from above and cometh 
down from the Father of Lights." To the 
questions of the Apostle, " Who maketh thee 
to differ from another? " and " What hast thou 
that thou didst not receive? " we can only 
answer, "All things come of Thee, O, God; 
Thou makest Thy sun to rise on the evil and 
on the good; Thou sendest rain on the just 
and on the unjust; Thou hast crowned our 
labours with success beyond our largest hopes. 
Truly, the lines are fallen unto us in pleasant 
places; yea, we have a goodly heritage." " He 
hath not dealt so with any nation." 

3. But there is one other aspect in which these 
words appeal to us at this time. Think of the 
opportunities which God has given to this 
nation, and think how those opportunites have 
increased during the past two years. Our 
future is no longer bounded by the oceans 
which wash our shores. " Our line is gone out 
into all the earth and our words to the end of 
the world." Since that May morning in Manila 
Bay, when our flag was raised on the Philip- 
pine Islands, we have become, as never before, 
a great world power, a political factor in the 
problem of eastern progress. We have a com- 
mon share with the nations of Europe in the 
work of taking western civilization to the other 
side of the world. It is false to say that we 
were not a world-power before the Spanish war. 
The moral and religious influences which had 



OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 1 7 

gone forth with our missionaries, the enterprize 
and industry of our merchants, the example set 
by our free-schools and our unfettered social 
usages had been felt and recognized in many 
lands, and had become the models which some 
older countries had delighted to follow. There 
are those who think we should have been con- 
tent to let our influence in those far off islands 
remain moral rather than military. There are 
many, and among them men of the first intelli- 
gence, who think that we made a great mistake, 
when, following up a plain duty (the rescue 
from cruel oppression of an island lying only 
one hundred miles from our own shores), we 
allowed ourselves to become involved in the 
vast political problems of the East, and to enter 
upon a costly career of colonial conquest. If 
" all governments derive their powers from the 
consent of the governed," it seems like a con- 
tradiction in terms that our free Republic 
should be forcing upon an alien race a govern- 
ment which they, or at least a large section of 
them, do not wish, preferring to govern them- 
selves, however unfit they may be for the under- 
taking. But if " the consent of the governed " 
is denied to those measures which are necessary 
to put down lawlessness and maintain order, if 
"the consent of the governed " is denied to meas- 
ures which are necessary to cleanse foul alleys 
and disinfect squalid lanes, to make streets 
clean and buildings pure and wholesome, then 



16 OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

a larger principle comes in and the common 
good of humanity, the greatest good of the 
greatest number demands that the stronger 
hand shall rule, where the wiser head and the 
larger heart have conceived plans and purposes 
which are plainly for the good of all. But 
whatever the wisdom, or unwisdom, of our 
remaining as a military power in those distant 
islands, it is too late now to discuss this ques- 
tion. The fact remains that we have stayed 
there with our ships and our army for more 
than two years, and we are there now with no 
immediate prospect of our complete withdrawal. 
And furthermore, and here is the point I would 
emphasize, this may mean vastly increased 
opportunities for spreading the best influences 
of our national life through all the East. It does 
mean vastly more of good or of evil for the 
Philippine Islands. Which it is to mean de- 
pends upon the American people ; and our faith 
in God leads us to hope confidently that in the 
end it will mean great good. More than half a 
century ago the poet sang: 

" Better sixty years of Europe 
Than a cycle of Cathay." 

And better thirty years of America, with all 
its faults and failings, than thirty thousand 
years of Asia with its heathen darkness, its 
ignorance and its need. Better the land where 
the Gospel has had the freest opportunity to 
mould men's characters and shape their lives, 



OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 1 9 

than the continent where the iron hand of an 
ignorant conservatism would make all things 
continue as they were from the beginning of 
the creation. 

" We're the heirs of all the ages, 
In the foremost files of time," 

II. 

This leads me naturally to speak of the sec- 
ond part of the theme suggested at the outset, 
and I shall only call attention to a few salient 
features of the subject, as it has been plainly 
suggested by all that has gone before. 

" Unto whomsoever much is given of him 
shall much be required." Great blessings mean 
great responsibilities. Great gifts from God 
mean large requirements at His hand. The fact 
that we are a favored nation should lead us to 
ask ourselves the most searching questions as 
to what we are doing for our own people and 
for the world. Are we seeking to honor the 
God and Father who has so richly blessed us ? 
Or are we seeking our own national aggran- 
dizement, our own selfish gain, our own present 
glory ? 

There are many dark omens abroad which 
bring sorrow to the loyal heart in the present 
crisis. There are many dark shadows which 
fall athwart the nation's pathway as we look 
into the future and endeavor to read the signs 
of the times. Let us leave off vain glorying 



20 OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

and loud boasting. With all our many causes 
for thanksgiving this is a time for deep search- 
ing of heart! Truly God has blessed us, but 
what have we done to show our gratitude ? Some 
awful sins lie on the national conscience. The 
menace of Mormonism has extended its dread 
influence and thrust its serpent fangs into nearly 
every State in the Union. Why have we suf- 
fered it to increase ? 

Lax divorce laws in some of our States 
have enabled men and women in the most con- 
spicuous walks of life to defy the plainest moral 
instincts with impunity and to lend their influ- 
ence and example to the destruction of family 
life and to the debasement of the most sacred 
relations. The liquor traffic, as an organized 
power, has been permitted to go on its course, 
spending vast sums to secure legislation favor- 
able to its interests; while its opponents, fre- 
quently disagreeing among themselves, always 
with great zeal, but often without the best dis- 
cretion, have so little support that their opposi- 
tion is like that of a helpless child struggling 
with an armed giant. The temperance cause, 
though led by the noble army of total abstainers, 
has often suffered defeat because of confusion 
in the minds of its followers between a moral and 
a political issue; and through the lack of union 
among good men, the liquor interests constantly 
succeed. There are now 158 American saloons 
in the city of Manila, whereas, according to 



OUR NATIONS RESPONSIBILITIES. 21 

reports, there were only six under Spanish rule.* 
If that is all we can do for the Filipinos, let us 
recall our ships and armies and put on sack- 
cloth and ashes, while we keep days of prayer 
and fasting as a people that have failed in the 
work to which God has called them. 

And how can we enter except with the ut- 
most care and gravest concern upon the gov- 
ernment of another "inferior race," when the 
awful news of negro lynchings comes to us from 
time to time? It is wafted northward from 
the once slave-holding States as a black 
night-mare to disturb our fancied security, to 
fill our hearts with shame and to put our faces 
to confusion ? How can any one imagine that 
the government of our new dependencies is to 
be anything but a stupendous task, involving 
the utmost vigilance and the most self-sacrificing 
labor? If you think otherwise, recall "the 
century of dishonor," which (notwithstanding 
much splendid effort on the part of individuals 



*The figures given are conservative. President Schurman quotes a 
native Filipino as saying, " You have brought us the blessings of civil- 
ization, and have lined our most beautiful street with 500 saloons." 
Some of these are doubtless native wineshops. Our most accurate 
information is from the President's report to the Senate (March c,th, 
igoo), which shows that this government has licensed places for the 
sale of intoxicating liquors in the city of Manila as follows: 

Saloons 158 

Wholesale dealers 77 

Native wineshops 613 

Distilleries 15 

Breweries i 

Total 864 

This does not include the "canteens," or Army Post saloons, of 
which there are nearly 200. One does not need to be a Prohibitionist 
nor a "total abstainer" to regard this state of things with indignation 
and alarm. 



22 OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 

and religious societies) has stained our history in 
dealing with the Redmen of the West. 

No! It is not a holiday excursion upon which 
we have embarked. It is no time as we recall 
these things, for self-satisfied applause, but 
rather for devout thanksgiving, that our national 
judgments have been so long averted, and for 
earnest prayer and united effort for better 
things. 

"New occasions breed new duties." We 
stand on the threshold of a new century. Shall 
we make it a century of progress for God and 
His Church ? Two duties should be kept con- 
stantly before us. The first is the recognition, 
in all our national life, of God as our Ruler and 
Judge. His law alone should be the guide of 
our conduct and the standard of our appeal. 
The other duty is the recognition of Christ 
Jesus as the Great Elder Brother of all men as they 
hear His voice calling them to come unto Him. 
O, how much that implies. It reminds us of 
God, not alone as Judge and Ruler, but as 
Father and Friend. It compels us to realize 
that as He is our Father, all we are brethren. 
And it forces us, if we mean anything by these 
words, to act toward the children of suffering 
and want, wherever they may be as though 
they really are our brothers, not so favored as 
we, not so blessed in lineage, in surroundings, 
in opportunities, but having the same needs, 
feeling the same sorrows, burdened by a vastly 



OUR NATION S RESPONSIBILITIES. 23 

heavier weight of the same cares, and needing 
the same divine help and strength and guidance 
for the unceasing battle of life. " Unto whom- 
soever much is given of him shall much be 
required." Let us realize that God has given 
us a great work to do as a nation, and as we 
give thanks for past mercies, let us rejoice most 
of all that there are many signs abroad of an 
awakening of the national conscience to a due 
sense of public duty. Let us remember that 
the strength of the nation is made up of the 
united strength of every individual which calls 
this land his own. Let us see to it, each one, 
that our influence and example and efforts are all 
for God and for righteousness and for the highest 
good of those about us in the world. Then 
may we face our responsibilities with new 
courage, and await the future knowing that the 
same God who led our Fathers in the past will 
lead us on to larger and still larger blessings 
in the days to come. And so shall we have 
ever new reason to say, "He hath not dealt so 
with any nation." " Praise ye the Lord." 



Mttan . 12 IPOl 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



0:0 22 1900 




011 527 872 1 



